Fast-forward almost 17 years, he has established an architectural firm in London that took out an international competition to design the new Iraqi parliament complex – a $US1 billion project.

The road from Brisbane to Baghdad started with a teenage flair for drawing and painting.

Born in Singapore to parents who “lived in many places’’, the 44-year-old grew up in Brisbane during the 70s and 80s.

“It was a very different, and relatively isolated, world,’’ he said.

“The National Party and Queensland police were in full swing, there were limited cultural institutions, no internet or cheap flights, poor journalism and media, and, in stark contrast, a largely pristine natural world of beaches and forests within easy reach.

“The nature of the mainstream values at that time meant that the city’s artistic and intellectual circles had a fugitive, close-knit intensity.’’

He was at the University of Queensland between 1988 and 1996, studying architecture and separately majoring in English and philosophy.

“I was painting and drawing a lot through my teenage years. As this progressed I became increasingly interested in its relationship with writing, and ultimately social issues,’’ he said.

“At the time, architecture seemed to have a rich mix of the arts and sciences; a discipline of its own but also an engagement with many other walks of life. I was attracted to the idea you could take it in many directions.

“But my older sister was also important in my decision to enrol in the course. She was already studying architecture, and I shared a number of run-down inner-city art studios with her architecture friends. They were influential in their enthusiasm to make things.’’

The University of Queensland felt like “some kind of citadel in hostile territory’’ during the late 1980s, according to Mr Besley, who was blessed with a “liberal family’’.

“For my entire youth I took it for granted that outside an immediate circle, my interests would be considered utterly absurd,’’ he said.

“I was lucky, in that I had a liberal family interested in outside things. There was always some interesting character at the dinner table.’’

Within weeks of graduating in the summer of 1996, Mr Besley bought a one-way plane ticket aiming for Dublin which he saw as a hive for artistic activity at that time.

He landed a job with a prominent architecture studio in Edinburgh.

With the internet world burgeoning, he was hired by a New York company in 1999 and given a two-pronged brief – to run the construction of its new headquarters in London and Milan while also driving thinking on the future of its digital services.

He moved to a London architecture studio in 2001 where he cut his teeth on urban design and was involved in major projects such as the 2012 London Olympics.

In late 2003, he branched out when he co-founded Assemblage – an architecture studio that has worked on projects in the UK, Australia and the Middle East.

Assemblage won an international competition – run by the United Nations – in 2011 to design new housing and towns in Iraq. Most recently, they won an international competition to design Iraq’s new parliamentary complex in Baghdad.

“The challenges are of course familiar to many war-torn countries: severely degraded infrastructure, and often fractured decision making,’’ he said.

“This is all ongoing.

“The main highlight for everyone so far has been the ambition via the international design competition of creating something truly important, both for Iraq and internationally.’’

Transparency was the primary consideration when designing any modern parliament, according to Mr Besley who stressed he was not using the term in a political or architecturally sense.

“By transparency I don’t mean accountability - that is for the ethos and procedures of the institution to embrace and enforce,’’ he said.

“Nor do I mean some naive architectural idea where transparency equals more glass, etc.

“I mean the embodiment of the transparency between citizens and government which reflects the essential democratic relationship. It is about the building’s sense of public ownership and accessibility. It must impart the positive possibility of the state - larger than the individual, but supportive and engaging not aggressive or oppressive.’’

Mr Besley said the complex was formed as a pattern of streets – indoor and outdoor – teamed with green courtyards. Some buildings and areas could be secured but most of it was open like any city.

“People already know how to move about in cities as opposed to huge nightmarish buildings,’’ he said.

“In our urban-campus type design there are multiple opportunities for interaction of different kinds between people and groups and their elected representatives.

“In the House of Representatives building itself, we made the chamber and its workings fully visible to the public. Overall we wanted the parliament to be understood as a social engine - active, productive, dynamic - and not as some kind of pious statue to be distantly respected - static.’’

When asked if being an ex-pat provide any special insights that help him do his job, Mr Besley said “definitely but it’s a very personal thing for me’’.

“It’s less being an ex-pat and more about being an immigrant,’’ he said.

“It began with my experience in Brisbane, and this was given more structure and, in a sense, lineage as an immigrant when I am in foreign lands.

“So when it comes to design, especially something like a parliament, I find it helpful to draw on an idea of citizenship which is pluralistic as opposed to a celebration of nationalism. I feel real empathy toward diversity, and strive to serve it in design.’’

Mr Besley said there were some fine buildings in Brisbane.

But he could not nominate any Brisbane building that he wished he had designed, saying he does not “tend to focus on authorship at all’’.

Brisbane’s worst buildings share the same characteristics with many problematic structures across the world.

“They represent unselfconscious globalisation. Anywhere buildings, serving anyone anything,’’ he said.

“We’re all familiar with the type, in fact it’s the normal urban environment for many people.

“The type is more important to identify than naming and shaming individual buildings, which is in fact a distraction.’’

If you have a story about an interesting ex-pat, email details to scoop@brisbanetimes.com.au.